Better School District Web Sites

We all spend a lot of time online and learn navigation by the text and visual clues used by the Web sites we frequent most. What about school district Web sites? They are particularly challenging to design, organize, and maintain. Here are a few reasons why:

1. They must meet the needs of many, very different users: a new elementary school parent, a veteran high school parent, a new teacher, a veteran teacher, all staff members, as well as the community, media, and many others.

2. They are often created and maintained by teams of people who do not have expertise in design or writing for the Web. Each department may use different language and design for navigating the same kinds of content.

3. They don’t have budget or dedicated staff. Although the Web site is becoming the face of the school or school district, it is not a high priority for resources.

Social networking tools may be one answer for crowded Web sites with complicated navigation paths. They allow a user to create an account and customize what information they see. They also allows the Web site owner to push out messages and content based on roles. Finally, most social networking systems are based on a content management system or database with templates and style sheets to provide a consistent look and feel, allowing many people to maintain content.

To learn more about social networking intranet best practices established in the corporate world, check out Jakob Nielsen’s alert “Social Networking on Intranets.” If you are designing a log-in or social networking tool for your district Web site, try diagramming the sites most frequently used by your audience first. Those are the systems your users already know.